Facebook, "People you may know" and the future...

This is not exactly a rant about Facebook (or Google, or this or that) and how we are allowing ourselves to be controlled somehow, to show to everyone what we like and we don't like and so on, but at least it's something interesting.

I'll say that I have been using internet for many years and pretty much always I've tried to hide my tracks or at least, make sure I can't really be linked. I'm planning to extend it further by using a new gmail account for everything with a pseudonym (if writers can do it...) and so on. I had Facebook for a year (never again for myself) and I didn't use my full name nor my normal e-mail account. If I google my full name, only two things appear, one from university and another one from a petition online (non-political, but rather stupid). So in short, I've tried to keep myself hidden as much as I could.

However, something interesting happened that was surprising and somehow worrying. Some time ago I created a Facebook persona so my team at work could use to contact other companies or people in for various reasons. This Facebook account was created with a new Google Mail account. Just to clarify, and unless I'm wrong, both Facebook accounts, mine and this one, didn't exist at same time and I never log on this work Facebook from home. So, until here, all fine...

...but then I saw, in the "People you may know" tab, people I do actually really know. Just...how? We're talking about an ex-girlfriend (Who I had on Facebook when I still used it) and a far relative from a different country with whom I never even shared an e-mail (that I can see) and the last time I saw him was like 6 years ago. How is this even possible? From where is the information being taken? There are some more people in the tab that I know and they are not friends of my colleagues or anything like that.

What is the limit?

EDIT : I believe I figured it out. It's related to the location from where you're logging into Facebook. I've logged with personal Facebook accounts from the same computer where I log on this FB persona for the team. While the other accounts are closed down, it's possible that FB is moving the "suggested friends" list to the active FB account. Kinda crazy...

This is the reason I do not use facebook or any social networking sites, it is too easy to track down someone past and personal history. Typing my real name into google comes up with a famous person, so I am safe there unless they want to trawl through a few hundred pages.

There are certain criteria with the people you may know thing. Ex: school attended, friends of friends, employers, things of that sort. In Rich's example though, when I type in my real name in Google, I find the articles and stuff I write for my website, which is fine since I put that information out there, but along with that stuff I find really personal information in the search results as well, such as, the properties I own and where those properties are located, exact addresses, time I owned it and all that. Creepy and a little scary. I never entered my information for those websites, but somehow they got all that from some database somewhere.

Mutual friends, chat or comment you have done about them, even one time they could "spy" on your other tabs (which was claimed to be "bug" or something haha)
Not to mention sites with facebook plugin..yeah.

"In the tone of their complaint you can see a mind already made up. Instead, it’s about affirmation they expected and didn’t receive. It’s not about the game getting universal praise from every writer reviewing it. It’s about getting universal praise for buying it."

There are certain criteria with the people you may know thing. Ex: school attended, friends of friends, employers, things of that sort. In Rich's example though, when I type in my real name in Google, I find the articles and stuff I write for my website, which is fine since I put that information out there, but along with that stuff I find really personal information in the search results as well, such as, the properties I own and where those properties are located, exact addresses, time I owned it and all that. Creepy and a little scary. I never entered my information for those websites, but somehow they got all that from some database somewhere.

There's zero connection (besides me) between my team's FB persona, my colleagues and these people that I know in real life and appear as suggested friends.

About your properties, that's certainly scary. Seen, in other forums, people getting their old properties (years ago ones) found just starting from an e-mail address. But I believe that in those cases, the common factor was the location : USA.

---------- Post added 2013-02-02 at 05:46 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Iceleaf

Mutual friends, chat or comment you have done about them, even one time they could "spy" on your other tabs (which was claimed to be "bug" or something haha)
Not to mention sites with facebook plugin..yeah.

Actually my guess is the location. I had some old FB account linked to my main e-mail that I created to see what was this FB thing about, but I closed it shortly after. I have logged with this e-mail in the job's computer, in the same computer where I have logged on FB. So I assume that Facebook is like "You connected from X place from these two FB accounts...so since you don't use that old account, we'll take the suggest friends to the other one".

I made a Facebook and owned it for a year before cancelling it. That was for too long, obviously. People I barely know began asking me at work why I "blocked" them. Seriously? You realized I wasn't showing up on your news feed anymore? You actively searched for my name and couldnt find it? You tried your usual stalking of me and it didn't work? scary stuff.